Mid climb internal noise is one of the most distracting and off-putting experiences you can have whilst on the wall. It is often enough to ruin great attempts on a climb, and often ruin your experience altogether. So why do these thoughts matter? And how do we start to keep them quiet whilst we focus on the job in hand?

Intuition in climbing is a bit like a 6th sense. Sometimes, stuff just works, and you have no idea how or why you thought about doing it. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had a little hunch to change beta on a move, and it worked. I thought I had refined and found the optimal way for a move, but in some fleeting moment, my brain told me to try something else. How can that be? And is it a trainable thing? Let's puzzle.

Hesitation and self-doubt whilst on the wall can be one of the most crippling things in bouldering. Knowing what a move is, and how it should be done, but not being able to do it, and taking the all too common step of dropping off or letting go. How do we get into these situations? How do they affect us? And how can we re-wire a little bit to avoid them? Let’s slay some demons.

When Jakob Schubert flashes your project it can initially be hard to understand why you are bothering in the first place. Eliot discusses taking a step back and focusing on you, your journey and the day to day reality of chasing it.

This focus on play and bringing joy back into my climbing has given me some good breaks from projecting, and allowed me to transition nicely between phases and seasons, maintaining motivation and having a good alternative plan for when injuries or busy periods crop up.

Getting thoroughly shut down by a boulder problem is one of the most grounding aspects of bouldering. If you want to push yourself and improve, dealing with this experience is one of the most important responses you’ll have to make in your climbing career. So how do you respond? 

Forgetting beta is one of the most common yet avoidable mistakes that climbers make. It’s all too easy to have a sequence decided upon, refined and prepared only to miss a little piece of the puzzle, where it all falls apart.

I knew straight away from the first day I climbed on a piece of rock, that I would be a climber. The movement, the adventure, the physical challenge. But can you go too far? Is there a price to chasing performance that should not be paid? I’ll try and provide some opinion and give you some ideas for exploring your own relationship with climbing.  

How do we dodge the trap of comparison to others, and relentless chasing of the next number and interact with grades in a way that’s sustainable and motivating? 

Knowing when to stick or twist is one of the most difficult things to do in projecting, especially when it’s something you’re obsessed with.

It’s often expected that bouldering outside will have us stress free and without a care in the world. We’ll be out climbing and enjoying nature on our own and totally loving every minute of it. The reality is often quite different.

What can you do to stay motivated while trying something at your limit? How can you make the process as enjoyable as possible, and still give yourself the best chance to succeed? Let’s dig in.

Fighting the weather and conditions is an uphill struggle in bouldering, and many times produces an experience that needn’t have been so involved and frustrating. So how do we try to work with nature a little more, and not fight it?

Understanding our true motivations to climb outside, is perhaps one of the hardest things to get to the root of. We’re often bamboozled by goals and objectives, which lead us away from really practicing climbing for the reasons we originally did.

Bouldering outside differs in so many ways from modern gym  climbing, and the gap is only getting larger! With macros and enormous volumes taking centre stage, crimps and foot jibs on steeper walls fading away, and gym grades getting softer than a chocolate teapot, the transition to outdoor bouldering is only getting tougher. 

Walking away from a boulder is one of the hardest things to practice in bouldering. It feels like quitting, and nobody likes to quit. But in reality, it’s one of the biggest skills, and practicing it offers a huge number of benefits, as well as avoiding a bunch of very frustrating problems!